Dover school budget plan decrease comes at cost of 21 jobs

Tuesday

Feb 5, 2013 at 3:15 AM

By Andrea Bulfinchabulfinch@fosters.com

DOVER — Superintendent Jean Briggs Badger and Business Administrator Michael Limanni presented a tax cap budget for Fiscal Year 2013 to School Board members Monday evening totaling $46,088,026 — a decrease in the school budget for the first time in at least a decade.

But it would come at the cost of 21 full-time jobs.

In order to meet the tax cap this budget requires a proposed personnel reduction of 21 full-time employees. These are positions currently held throughout the district, but that would no longer be affordable under the proposed budget.

Briggs Badger said it is unknown at this time where that staff would be cut from, but said the elementary and middle schools are already very close to state standards. As a result it would be likely that the kindergarten program and high school would be affected.

The School Department is allowed a $690,060 increase in the school tax levy as part of the FY 14 budget.

Presented at a scheduled workshop Monday night, Briggs Badger said 75 percent of the budget is made up of personnel costs tied up in wages and benefits.

“We’re in a people business. We educate children, and as such 75 percent of the budget is people,” she said.

There, however, are no proposed cost of living expenses in the budget, she said.

The proposed budget, which School Board members will act on over the coming months so as to submit the document to City Manager Mike Joyal by March 15, also includes $3,914,453 in debt services, a decrease of 1.85 percent from last year’s $3,988,329 debt services expense.

A tuition reduction of about $662,693, or 15.44 percent, is included as a loss in the budget, though actual numbers from neighboring towns such as Barrington and Nottingham, who must pay 95 percent of their projected student enrollment, are not due until mid-March.

Nothing is final in the budget that was proposed Monday night and School Board members will begin discussing and making decisions on where potential cuts could be made at its next meeting.